I have so many things on the go at the moment that once again I’ve not had time to put together anything substantial for the blog, though hopefully this situation will be put to rights before too long. In the meantime, I can tell you that in terms of non-fiction writing I’m already preparing some posts for the weird fiction reading project/challenge/whatever I’m planning for 2016 (more on that soon), plus this week alone I’ve been drafting another review for Strange Horizons, as well as my Time Pieces column for the January issue of Interzone.

What is it about the end-of-year that always leaves me feeling as if I need a thirteenth month to get everything finished?

Work on The Rift is…exciting. It’s interesting and strange, that moment when a piece of writing begins to feel like a thing in its own right, something that exists apart from you and with its own agenda. There’s still enough new stuff happening in this draft to make it feel risky though, and surprising, to me most of all. Bizarrely, I seem to be enjoying myself.  The third draft is at the halfway mark, give or take a thousand words or so.

Listening to: Joanna Newsom, all the albums including the new one but especially my absolute favourite Ys, which I think may be one of the greatest song-sets ever written. It won’t come as any surprise to anyone, I’m sure, to learn how much I adore Newsom’s sprawling lyrics, which appear loose and anarchic but which are in fact supremely disciplined, supremely composed. Open-ended but intentionally so.

That’s how you write short stories…